UltimateBet Poker Site Admits Players Cheated, But Won't Name Names

By cwaltersSeptember 18, 2008

Here’s a mystery story to distract you from the U.S. Banking Apocalypse. UltimateBet.com, “one of the top 10 poker sites,” has admitted that employees manipulated the software to cheat from at least January 2005 to January 2008, when some players started noticing an unusually high rate of wins for a certain user name. An Australian player mapped that user’s wins against accounts that had played a similar number of hands, and realized that “NioNio’s” wins were “less likely than ‘winning a one-in-a-million lottery on four consecutive days.'” But NioNio is just one part of the mystery.

As the players continued to dig, they concluded that NioNio was at the center of a web of accounts that were able to change user names with ease, making it harder for victims to detect the cheating.

UltimateBets launched an investigation when the players brought this to their attention, and in March of this year they issued a confirmation that certain players had been cheating by taking advantage of malicious code that had been inserted by prior employees.

As of September, no one has been named in the scandal, although some players have named a poker pro. Two other poker pros visited him in person, with a lawyer present, and now say they’re no longer sure he was the culprit—or at least not the main culprit.

Another problem is that the company that claims ownership of UltimateBet—”Tokwiro Enterprises, headquartered in the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory in southern Canada”—may be a front for Blast-Off Ltd., which has filed an $85 million claim against UltimateBet. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission has ordered an investigation of UltimateBet, but that’s not comforting some victims:

[Tokwiro] has issued some refunds and promised to repay any players who lost money once an outside investigation is completed. But many players who haven’t received credits remain fearful they will never see a dime.

Nice detective work. But I really want to know is what the axes on that chart represent. I’m guessing the X-axis is how often you win, with x=0 breaking even and x<0 losing money, but I’m stumped as to what Y is.

Who would have thought that a game played over the internet… connected to computers in Antigua… far away from regulation or oversight… with millions of dollars at stake… that is generally considered illegal to play in the states… would be manipulated improperly for illicit gain.

I have just recovered after swooning at the subtlety of your sarcasm, and so am somewhat hesitant to inform you that it actually IS rather surprising, because fairness and above-board operations account for a huge wedge of online poker sites’ profits. Their business models depend on it. Simply put, the slightest suspicion of cheating will cause players to leave in droves, and out go the golden-egg-laying geese. Case in point: I will be very surprised if Ultimate Bet is still around 6 months from now, while their main competition will still be raking in the big bucks after having upgraded their security even further. Most of these companies are run by savvy businessmen, and they know very well that cheaters in their midsts would be VERY bad for their bottom lines.

@Xanaxian: true, but only the owners have a reason to ensure the above-board nature of their product. So, while you may trust the owners and their security measures, you can never know for sure that some other player somewhere in the world hasn’t devised a way to cheat. And even if you could, there’s no immediate satisfaction available such as shooting him with a derringer you have hidden in your belt buckle.

@Xanaxian: I actually mostly agree with you. However, I also firmly believe that what has occurred is inevitable at almost all of these gaming sites. You’re right that even a whiff of impropriety and you’re toast in this business, but it still took a few years to flush out the cheating at Ultimate Poker. And this is quite a blow to the entire community, as Ultimate was backed by some big poker players. If they can’t guarantee the site’s safe, who can? I’m not saying that Phil Helmuth is a computer genius or anything, but you have to imagine they received very comprehensive assurances. Just image how bad this looks for Helmuth and how they could damage his image as well.

@twritersf: I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to wager money in online poker by federal law. It didn’t used to be, but I believe it is now for a few years. This is why when you wager online, you always charged on your credit card with something that doesn’t sound at all like “CHARGE ONLINE POKER INC.” It’s always something completely random that sounds like it could be anything.

That reminds me, a long time ago, a friend of mine put together a NCAA friendly pick-em, $10 got you one pick out of a jar with a team name on it. Winner takes all money. Well, that was the year UNLV was undefeated and the bastard cheated and grabbed UNLV for himself. Unfortunately they were, as we all knew, upset by Duke who went on to win the title. So my idiot friend feels it’s OK to admit he cheated since he didn’t win and some of the particpants find out and beat the piss out of him, even after he lost. It’s the principle dammit.

@Corporate-Shill: In multi-table tournament play it is unlikely that two colluding players would be at the same table, at least initially. Hands are played fast enough that collusion would be difficult at best via cell phone.

And you’re right about cheating at cards being nothing new; the thing here is that the poker sites allegedly were aware of it for a fairly long period of time without addressing it in any meaningful way. If this article steers but a few players away from these particular sites, then it is a good thing.

From what I understood about these sites, they had systems in place to detect such things. Even 2 players playing in the same public tournament together too often was supposed to be detectable.

I could see a savvy cheater rigging the system, then moving on to a different name to stay under the radar. But ‘1 in a million 4 consecutive days’ kind of win pattern screams at best incompetency by the site, or at worst, collusion.

@chartrule I didn’t mean any offense by my exaggeration. I’m Canadian myself. My point was that “southern Canada” could be Vancouver, Montreal, or any point between, and that the small amount of geography they gave us was (almost) a given.

@Mr_Human: Absolute Poker had an insider breach also. UltimateBet did disclose their breach a few months back in an email to players. BTW, guess who merged just after the AbsolutePoker scandal broke. AbsolutePoker and UltimateBet!

@twophrasebark: The federal law only prohibits banks from processing credit card payments to gambling sites. If you can get money into a poker account through other means (MoneyGram, Western Union, etc), it’s legal.

the guys over at http://www.twoplustwo.com have a weekly poker cast and have been covering this mess for months. These guys are on one of the best sites about poker, so if you want to learn more about all this mess, and maybe how to play some great cards, thats the site to visit.